The new album is your fourth in three years, I say. How long can you maintain this pace before you melt?
Liam, leather jacketed, says: “Erm. It’s an often-asked question. But I think we’re feeling pretty good. We’ve just had a couple of days off, actually.” Louis, in a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt, corrects him: “A couple of weeks off.” Liam: “Couple of weeks off, yeah. Couple of weeks. So we’ve been chilling. But we’re all pretty hard-working. We just enjoy it more than anything. It’s not a question of burnout.”
To those people who haven’t given your albums a listen before, why should they?
“You know, I think, why not?” Harry asks. He’s wearing a sleeved vest and, unlike the others, who are rapid and chirpy, speaks in a slow drawl – there’s a touch of Eddie Izzard. Louis talks about there being something for their fans on the record, but also something for their fans’ parents – an 80s-influenced seam that might be found nostalgic.
I wonder about Roger Daltrey. Was it fair for him to suggest that One Direction lack purpose?
Louis: “Aaayyyuhhh ... I mean, everyone’s entitled to their own opinion.” Liam: “I didn’t even hear that.” Louis: “No, that’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
Zayn, wearing a knitted jumper, speaks about One Direction not trying to impress anyone. Louis returns to the matter of purpose. “Like, we’re doing a signing today, [because] it’s incredible to give back to the fans. And you only have to look at how overwhelmed some of them are, even just for a meeting with us, it’s incredible. And I think, as a parent, looking at that, there’s your purpose. You know, we’re hopefully making people happy, so ...”
I’m confused – do you keep bringing up parents because I’m from the Guardian?
Louis: “Well, no. Maybe. Maybe. I don’t know.” Niall, in a grey tee, has been hanging back. Now he leans in and says, “I don’t know too many 15-year-old girls who read the Guardian.” Thickly accented, the Irishman says this with the nuclear decisiveness of a final word, a matter settled, and Louis turns to him. “Nice, Niall, covering there. Dropping in. Sweeper!”
I’ve brought a copy of Williams’s book with me, and when I pull it out, they say, “Oh great. Oh sick.” I read them the “tired and scared” passage. Williams was remembering life in Take That after four years on the road. Does it chime?
Louis: “I’d say we’re tired at times. But scared?” Niall: “No, not scared.” Zayn: “Where he says ‘scared’, maybe it was something to do with him not knowing where he wanted to go with himself.” Harry: “I think we’ve also been lucky enough to have stuff that went on with them [Take That] as an example.” Liam: “There was a different hierarchy in that band.”
Quickly I’ve come to dread Liam’s interruptions, his land-scorching “erms” that tend to halt any surrounding chat. At one point, I hear him directing traffic, murmuring to Louis after a question: “You go, I’ll follow.” By all accounts (so the super-fans told me, so his stylist said), Liam took the longest to find his niche in the band. Harry locked down the role of Sexy One early, having had an affair with an X Factor host, Caroline Flack, 16 years his senior. Louis was cheeky and confident, and so the Funny One. Niall smiley, inoffensive: the Nice One. Reticent Zayn was named Mysterious, and with these other roles taken, Liam finally found his place as the Responsible One.
“We feel most at home when we’re sat writing, or on stage, that’s our thing,” Liam tells me flatly. “There’s no real getting away from it.” He’ll later put a message on Twitter that reads in its entirety “Very interesting day today”, and when such a thing is approvingly retweeted 55,000 times, I guess there isn’t a lot of pressure to be interesting. But I’m encouraged he has been considering hierarchy within the band. They all should. The time is coming, it must be, when this unnaturally contained pack of males won’t be able to go on in each other’s company. The songs will chafe, as will the schedule. One Direction will split because boybands do, at which point hierarchy – in terms of an individual’s charisma, musicianship, credibility, cool – is all that will matter.
Have they made any sort of pact? That if one member wants to leave, the band folds?
Louis: “No, we haven’t really. What do you mean?” Liam: “No, we haven’t spoken about that.” Zayn: “What would the pact entail?” Liam: “Well, I don’t know if it will [fold]. Without any of us ... Yeah, I don’t think it will, I think that’s the magic of it. We still feel like we’re on our rise a little bit.”
Just about everyone else I asked felt this band was nearer its end than its beginning. Some had doubts One Direction, pushing into year five, would go much further. “Not long for this world,” a glossy-mag editor told me. For what it’s worth, someone who knows someone in the band’s camp said there was nothing in the diary after next summer. Frances and Elise, listening to tracks from Four with me, enjoying it, suddenly offered the following: “They’re 22, 23 now. They must hate this kind of music.” Frances: “Harry likes Pink Floyd.” Elise: “He’s said he was inspired by Mick Jagger. So how can he possibly enjoy singing these songs?” It took me a moment to realise the girls weren’t being critical; they were asking me to disagree with them, reassure.
I couldn’t. The boys say to me: “We’re just making the music that we love.” Yet for all the fun and verve contained in a new-album track such as Girl Almighty, theirs is still music targeted squarely at one market, the clue to which is in that song title. They’ve put out decent pop since 2011. They’re pushed to their best when Ed Sheeran contributes a track or two per release cycle. But I’m not surprised it grated when a Mumford failed to recognise them as musicians. The boys of One Direction are ageing faster than their output. If this is a generalisation, it’s one based on hard sales data: theirs is not music to which early-20s males listen.
One Direction were seen leaving a festival in May on chartered planes – two separate planes, members dividing between. Some industry people I spoke to off-record insisted there were serious personal divisions, and weirdly the way the boys are arrayed on the couch today happens to correspond to what I’ve heard. Louis and Zayn, bunched together on the left of the couch, are supposedly the naughty clique. Harry, on his own little protrusion of sofa to the right, exists at a remove. Niall and Liam are sandwiched between. I discuss it with the band. Two years ago, when their documentary was filmed, they came across as surprised and delighted to realise they were still mates. What happened?
Louis: “No, I mean, you only have to take today for example. You know, we’ve not seen each other for about two weeks.” Liam: “It’s like the first day back at school!” Louis: “Exactly, we’re all really excited to be here ... It’s fun. It’s fun.”
What about this business of different vehicles? Why travel separately, if it’s fun? Liam: “I think that’s more a security thing than anything else.” Niall: “Yeah, that’s more a security thing.” Liam: “If we’re spread out, no one can target one car.” Liam leaves this curious image hanging in the air. What am I meant to think? One Direction’s car, hijacked, bazooka-ed, the loss of all five at once? I ask if they employ doubles, look-a-likes who can draw enemy fire. “We’re actually the look-a-likes,” Liam says, gesturing at his bandmates on the sofa. “We’re not even the real deal.”
Our interview is over. I hand them a scrapbook made over many months by Elise and Frances. The band must have taken a thousand such offerings, but they’re decent boys, and make themselves interested and flattered. I give them a present myself: a copy of Robbie Williams’ book, in part an essential playbook on making the transition to a soloist. I put it on the floor, intrigued to see who will pick it up. Harry, the Sexy One, and the favourite to make a name for himself alone? Zayn, the Mysterious One, who has the best voice? Niall, the Nice One, or Louis, the Funny One? Surely not Liam, the Responsible One. Harry reaches. Liam gets there first. “Thanks,” he says, swiping it up.